Our World Cup Quiz would have run more smoothly if we had hired a lawyer to draft unambiguous questions. Two of our three hurdle questions eliminated nobody. Only Grünfeld fans were killed off early on.

Below are what I believe to be the correct answers to all the questions. Before we assess your efforts, and then declare a winner, it seems wisely paranoid to check with our eagle-eyed blog readers that all the answers below are true. Any disagreements or ambiguities?

Hurdle Questions

A: What will the most common opening move be in Round 1 (excluding playoffs): 1.e4 or 1.d4 or neither? A 50-50 draw between 1.e4 and 1.d4, so you could make a case for all 3 answers being right, so we ignore this question.
B: Which English player will go further: Gawain Jones or David Howell? (if knocked out at same stage then which one has played more moves is the tiebreak) Both knocked out in Round 1. Gawain played more moves, but David survived one more day, so is that going further? No ideal answer, so we also ignore this question.
C: Which opening will be more common in Round 3 (excluding playoffs)? Grunfeld or Caro-Kann or tie? CARO-KANN. Eliminated if you said Grunfeld or tie.

The English Chess Federation announced its four-book shortlist for Book of the Year. Each publisher is allowed to nominate two books and the Quality Chess two both made the cut. Ilya Smirin’s King’s Indian Warfare and Jacob’s Thinking Inside the Box are our runners. The other two nominees are books by Timman and Portisch, so it’s tough competition, but so far it’s going as well as possible.

We have run a few quizzes before, and they have been fun, so with the 2017 World Cup starting on Sunday in Georgia, let’s have another. I say it’s for fun, but there is a winner-takes-all prize.

Quality Chess will send a box of 20 books to your home. 10 of them chosen by you, 10 of them chosen by us. All you have to do is to predict some results in the World Cup. We will contact the winner once the World Cup is over and organize the shipment of the prize.

Hurdle Questions: To allow us to quickly reduce the number of emails to check, only participants who get the three initial questions right will proceed to the second round of scoring. The points scored in the first round will count in the second round (unless otherwise stated, a correct answer is worth one point).

A: What will the most common opening move be in Round 1 (excluding playoffs): 1.e4 or 1.d4 or neither?B: Which English player will go further: Gawain Jones or David Howell? (if knocked out at same stage then which one has played more moves is the tiebreak)C: Which opening will be more common in Round 3 (excluding playoffs)? Grunfeld or Caro-Kann or tie?

Last week Colin McNab, long-time QC editor and proofreader, was in Dresden, Germany as part of the British team at the World Chess Solving Championships. The Polish team of Piorun, Murdzia and Mista proved too strong, but Britain took the silver medals – well done all. Full results here.

The photo below, by Franziska Iseli, shows Colin with his teammates Jonathan Mestel and John Nunn – all three are of course over-the-board Grandmasters.

We have had the answers to the Quiz, and now is the time to officially announce the winner. Congratulations to “J.A. Topfke”!

Thanks to everyone who took part, and commiserations in particular to “RAP” who, as he mentioned in this comment, missed out on winning by one move. He was level on points, with the tiebreaker being how many moves the longest game would be. 94 was correct. 86 said RAP; 87 said J.A. Topfke.

The potential confusion of whether Magnus appealing to reduce a fine counted as an official complaint (I say no) luckily had no impact on the top places, however you interpreted it. We would have the same winner even if “yes” was accepted as the correct answer.

We did receive an email from our winner “J.A. Topfke” (using his real name) and we did reply, but we doubt our reply was safely received, as an automatic error message arrived here. So hello J.A.! We are not ignoring you; you just seem to have a lot of email problems. We do have a name and delivery address, so all should be well in sending you the prize – books written by the late Mark Dvoretsky. J.A., if you wish to get in touch, then maybe your email is fixable, or you can leave a comment on the blog.